Yesterday, Republicans in Congress spent a lot of time talking about how the Congressional Budget Office projected that their health care bill would reduce the cost of premiums. Kansas Rep. Lynn Jenkins wouldn’t stop tweeting about it, in fact.
Now that the dust has settled and we can have some independent people take a look at their bill and go beyond the spin, we find that the GOP Plan will hardly cover people. No wonder it’s cheaper… in the end you don’t get health care.
According to the Washington Post:
“The long-awaited Republican entry in the health care debate received its assessment late Wednesday from congressional budget analysts, who concluded that the proposal would barely dent the ranks of the uninsured.
The measure would cover only 3 million additional people at a cost of $60 billion through 2019, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It would leave more than 52 million Americans uninsured a decade from now.
“The share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage in 2019 would be about 83 percent, roughly in line with the current share,” CBO director Douglas Elmendorf wrote in a letter to House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).”
No wonder it will, in the words of Rep. Lynn Jenkins, “lower healthcare premiums” it doesn’t cover anyone. How is it cost efficient to have a health care plan that costs that much but has no hope of providing health care?
UPDATE: But wait… there’s more. According to the NYTimes
“The House Republican Bill Would Not Explicitly Prohibit Insurers From Denying Coverage To People Because Of Pre-Existing Medical Conditions, Even Though Many Republicans Have Said They Agree With Democrats That The Federal Government Should Outlaw Such Denials.”
And according to a previous CBO report that specifically looked at purchasing plans across state lines
CBO’s budget options outlined the effects of a plan to “allow individuals to purchase nongroup health insurance coverage in any state.” It found that “the net result…would be…a decrease in coverage of 100,000 among those with high expected spending.” CBO director Doug Elmendorf noted that it “would enabled younger and relatively health individuals…to purchase a cheaper policy in another state. Older and less healthy residents…would probably face higher premiums as a result.”
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